Enclosure, Killeen, Co. Laois

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Killeen, Co. Laois

In a field in Killeen, County Laois, the ground itself is doing the talking, and only from a considerable height does it make any sense.

A partial cropmark, the kind of faint discolouration in growing vegetation that betrays buried structures beneath the soil, traces out the arc of what appears to be a bivallate enclosure, meaning a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by two concentric ditches or banks rather than one. The mark describes roughly half of a ring approximately 49 metres in diameter, cut short where a field boundary interrupts the view.

Cropmarks of this kind are a familiar, if quietly remarkable, feature of Irish aerial archaeology. Buried ditches retain moisture differently from the surrounding soil, causing the crops or grass above them to grow at a slightly different rate or colour, revealing outlines invisible at ground level. The bivallate form suggests something beyond a simple farmstead enclosure; the double-ditched arrangement is associated in Ireland with sites of some status or significance, though without excavation it is difficult to say more. This particular example came to light through aerial imagery captured on 14 July 2018 via Google Earth, and was subsequently recorded by Caimin O'Brien working from details supplied by Jean-Charles Caillère.

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